CBC surprising me a bit here: I went into the article expecting the same format I’ve come to expect, only to discover at the very end of the article that no, the author actually included all of the relevant information I was looking for.

Saskatchewan Government – The government portal with information on Saskatchewan’s role regarding cannabis legalization.

Media RoundupCBC – YES– At the bottom, not only is there an inline’d PDF version of the report which you can view within the article itself, but they also included rehosted pdf and text versions of the report which you can download for yourself.

Good on the CBC for including the pdf and text versions as part of the article itself, on the day that the public event was held unveiling the report, given that there were otherwise no online uploads of the report as of this point.

And now for something a little different: an example where the information being provided in an article actually isn’t available online (at least at the time of publication). Here is an article from the CBC discussing various government agencies and their history of blocking or deleting posts on various social media, information provided by the government in response to questions posed by Members of Parliament* during routine proceedings. As part of the article, it provides a number of statistics, as well as a handy charge with source attribution to “Documents tabled in the House of Commons”.

This last part is key, since if you want to find out about anything that happened on a day the House or Senate sat, you go to the handy Parliament website, which includes not only the Order & Notice Paper for the Day, but also any documents tabled or debates recorded via Hansard. However, if you were to navigate to today’s session, you would notice that the Journal & Hansard sections aren’t updated…because they’re currently still live. It’s thus perfectly reasonable to not expect supporting information or sources to be provided to the reader.

* With that being said, the questions by Members are Parliament are available, as there is some turnaround time inherent to responding to questions by MPs, and can be found here & here:

Mr. Nater (Perth—Wellington) — With regard to the deletion of social media posts on government websites, since January 1, 2016, and broken down by department, agency, crown corporation, or other government entity: (a) how many posts were deleted; and (b) what was the reason for each deletion in (a)?

Mr. Obhrai (Calgary Forest Lawn) — With regard to social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and others, operated by departments, agencies, crown corporations, other government entities, including Ministerial accounts, since November 4, 2015, and broken down by account and by incident: (a) how many individuals were blocked; (b) what was the reason for each account being blocked; (c) what was the handle or name of each account which was blocked; and (d) what is the policy as it relates to blocking accounts?

This time it’s an amendment to legislation that came about during Senate question period time. I completely understand the lack of immediate sourcing for news stories covering it. That being said: we do still have online resources to call upon here!

Pertinent Source MaterialBill S-3 – Parliament’s very useful website that houses all of the information you would need for a piece of legislation, including amendments, debates, etc. as it proceeds through the process of becoming law.

Senate Debate – Debates for any given day from the Senate. These are fun! They’re also long and require some reading through to get to the important bits. For our purposes here, this is a link to the proceedings for November 7th.

Media Roundup
CBC (Article #1 & Article #2) – NO – Fairly standard coverage of an issue, so, no inline links and only related stories spread along the city. Second article follows same format as the first.Globe & Mail – NO – Nothing within the article, not even many related links on the issue until the end.National Post – NO – Only a single inline link, but to related story near the end, nothing else.

As mentioned, I can kind of excuse this type of reporting not caring too much about providing links to the Bill itself. But it would be nice to still have that there, in case someone wants to reference it, since Parliament provides a useful website tracking the step-by-step progress of all legislation.

Also, Senate Debates, while a lot of text to scroll through, do provide you with exact quotes from Senators who stand up and speak. This is very useful to have available when you want to see exactly what was said, which isn’t always conveyed within media reports.

Tabled legislation this time, which means there are absolutely public domain resources out there: Parliament, for one; as well as Ministerial announcements talking about the Bill in question, typically.

Media RoundupCBC – NO – No links whatsoever, only a pair of related stories.CTV – YES – Inline links not only directly to Bill C-65 itself, but also a link to previous federal consultation efforts on the matter both inline, and specifically called out in a sidebar.Macleans – NO – Not even related stories links, though this might be a format style.

CTV’s article is well done. From reading it, we get a link immediately to the Bill as tabled, and then later in the article we get a link to the background information (in the form of the previous Federal Survey) both inline when they talk about it, but also included in a “related links” sidebar separate from the typical related stories category you tend to find.

Relatively recent news as of this post, so only CBC for now. The type of news at the original source is in a slightly more arcane form (an official ministerial direction), so there’s some merit to the idea that it comes across better in a journalistic format than having people try and read through the original (though I would still like it linked).

Media RoundupCBC – NO – Plenty of inline links to previous articles on the matter, including a comprehensive sidebar. Reference to the National Framework is only in the last paragraph as a capstone that situates the new direction in relation to an overall strategy, but without providing a link to said framework.Toronto Star – NO – Also a no on the link to the ministerial direction.

Leading off with this particular topic since it’s a fairly active public policy sphere and will continue to be at least until July.

Format, for the time being will be a link to the article in question, followed by an indication as to whether you can find primary source material from the article proper, and then brief comments (if any). Also, links up front to the relevant source material that should be getting linked in the first place.

Overall, not surprising in that there were no direct links to the actual press release. Also disappointing were no links (with one exception) to the LCBO Cannabis Updates website which itself is hard to find (as the main LCBO website does not refer to it).

Props, however, to whomever wrote the Ottawa-centric CBC article, as they were the only ones to link to the main updates website directly.